King Solomon's Name Lingers At ‘Armageddon’ Digging Site

King Solomon's Name Lingers At ‘Armageddon’ Digging Site

By Bill Broadway

Washington Post

From: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/9581704.htm

Five George Washington University students and their archaeology
professor went to Armageddon this summer, not to search for clues
to a cosmic battle yet to come between good and evil, but to seek
understanding of civilizations past.

One of the most important issues they addressed was whether a
palace attributed to King Solomon in what is now northern Israel
was in fact built by Solomon, the son of King David renowned for
his wise leadership and for his illicit relationship with the queen
of Sheba.

It’s no small question, and it has great significance for
Jews and Christians alike, said Eric Cline, associate professor
of ancient history and anthropology at George Washington University,
who co-directed a dig on a hill about 15 miles southeast of Haifa,
Israel, known as Megiddo. (Armageddon is a Greek corruption of
the Hebrew word har, meaning mount, and Megiddo.)

Little evidence has been uncovered to prove Solomon’s ties
to a particular building – or to prove that he existed at
all. Some European scholars who call themselves “biblical
minimalists” maintain that Solomon is a mythological figure,
a kind of Jewish King Arthur.

“These guys are nuts,” Cline said in a terse assessment
of their thinking.

Cline and other archaeologists believe that Solomon’s Palace
at Megiddo, which some consider a cornerstone in understanding
Solomon’s life and times, was constructed in the 9th century
B.C., a century after Solomon’s reign. This conclusion is
based on recent excavations at the site, which is one of the world’s
richest archaeological fields and has yielded the layered remains
of two dozen cities over a 6,000-year period.

Strategically located on the Via Maris, the region’s primary
highway connecting Egypt in the south with Syria and Mesopotamia
to the north and east, Megiddo guarded the agriculturally rich
Jezreel Valley 70 to 100 feet below. Generations of inhabitants
in a city that was destroyed and rebuilt 25 times looked down on
bloody conflicts involving armies of such groups as Assyrians,
Canaanites, Egyptians, Israelites, Philistines, Greeks, Romans,
Crusaders and Germans.

Napoleon fought there in 1799, winning a battle against the Ottoman
army but losing the campaign to control the region. In 1918, the
British army defeated the Turks in a decisive battle that wrested
control of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire for the first time
in 400 years.

Megiddo is important to biblical scholars because it was inhabited
during every period of the Hebrew Bible. “It’s simply
the most important site of the biblical period in the country,” said
David Ussishkin, 68, one of three directors of the Megiddo Expedition,
based at Tel Aviv University.

This summer’s dig was the sixth installment of the expedition,
which was launched in 1992 and brings excavators to the site every
two years. Earlier digs were conducted by the German Society for
Oriental Research, from 1903 to 1905; the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago, from 1925 through 1939; and the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, from the late 1960s through the early
1970s.

George Washington University is one of half a dozen colleges in
partnership with Tel Aviv, supplying student volunteers who work
three or more weeks on the site, in one or two sessions, and professors
who teach classes and supervise portions of the excavation. Few
if any American students participated in the 2002 excavation because
of security concerns after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
and increased violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

The 20-acre site, managed by the Israel Nature and National Parks
Protection Authority, is laid out in a grid with such identifying
labels as H, J, K, L and M. Mapping the site allows different generations
of archaeologists to compare findings.

Cline’s students, who registered through Tel Aviv University
and joined their professor at the site, didn’t find an inscription
or other definitive evidence to connect the palace to Solomon,
who the Bible says built Megiddo as part of a construction program
that included a temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings 9:15).

In the palace area, where Cline and co-director Margaret Cohen
of Penn State University supervised 14 people, including George
Washington anthropology major Sarah Loyer, 19, of Chelmsford, Mass.,
two horse-head figurines were uncovered.

The horse images represent another Megiddo debate – whether
a stable area traditionally believed to have been Solomon’s
was actually built by him – and whether it even was a stable.
Some scholars argue that the structure, possibly constructed with
stones from the palace after it was destroyed by humans or an earthquake,
might have been a warehouse or an opium manufacturing plant.

“It would have been nice if we had found the horses’ heads
in the stables,” said Cline, who had to leave after the first
half of the summer dig to assume his new job as chair of George
Washington’s Department of Classical and Semitic Languages
and Literature. “But we found the horse heads in the palace
level, above the stables.”

Do the heads represent a Solomonic connection? “Who knows?” Cline
said, adding his conviction that the building was a stable for
some ruler.

Cline, 43, has participated in Megiddo excavations five times
but has researched the site’s history throughout his career.
Four years ago, in time for millennial celebrations, he published “Battles
of Armageddon,” a book on 34 major conflicts that have taken
place in the 30-mile-wide Jezreel Valley, five of them recorded
in the Old Testament.

Cline said many professional and student archaeologists are drawn
to Megiddo by the Armageddon connection. Many biblical scholars
believe that the Jezreel Valley will be the site of the penultimate
battle between the forces of God and Satan, with the final conflict
and return of the Messiah taking place in Jerusalem. But dig participants
have come from a wide spectrum of beliefs – Jewish, Christian,
Buddhist, Muslim, agnostic – and most come with open minds
about the connection of archaeological finds and history as recorded
in the Bible, Cline said.

Cline’s students said they were drawn to the dig for a variety
of reasons, mostly for its importance to the history of Israel
and the site’s extraordinary record of human accomplishment.

“Some people (in the United States) can’t fathom having
to get around in a horse and buggy,” Saltzman said. “To
think about how people lived 3,000 years ago boggles the mind.”

Prutzman recalls her daily ritual of leaving the kibbutz where
most students stayed at 4:45 a.m. for a 15-minute walk to the site
for the 5 o’clock start. “I’d watch the sun rise
and the cars moving in the valley. ... And I’d see the lights
of Nazareth and Mount Gilboa above the plain and think, ‘This
area is so beautiful!’ ”

The draw of the land, combined with the rush of finding “a
person or even a pot that hasn’t seen light in 1,000 years,” will
bring her and other students back to Megiddo.

“This will not be my last season,” Prutzman said. “I
have every intention of going back in 2006.”